SCOCAblog by the California Constitution Center and the Hastings Law Journal

Are you a law professor, practicing attorney, or just an avid follower of the California Supreme Court? Contact us at scocablog@hastingslawjournal.org if you are interested in becoming a SCOCAblog contributor.

In 2015: We can expect some interesting new trends to develop at the court this year. As of this month, two new members have taken seats on the SCOCA bench: Justice Cuéllar, replacing Justice Kennard, and Justice Kruger, replacing Justice Baxter. Along with Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye and Justice Liu, who both joined the court in 2011 (replacing Chief Justice George and Justice Moreno, respectively), that makes four new or relatively-new members of the seven-member bench – a majority of the court has served less than four years. At the time he joined the court in August 2011, Justice Liu was...

California’s newest Supreme Court Justice, Leondra R. Kruger, served from 2007 to 2012 as an Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States. Hired initially by Republican Solicitor General Paul Clement, Kruger served under six different confirmed or acting Solicitors General. When Neal Katyal was elevated to Acting Solicitor General in 2010 he appointed Kruger as his Acting Principal Deputy, the second-highest position in that office. Kruger’s appointment as Principal Deputy in 2010 capped an unusually fast rise, indicative of Kruger’s innate skills as well as her ability to command respect from peers and, indeed, experienced colleagues much older...

Yesterday, Leondra Kruger was confirmed by the Commission on Judicial Appointments as the newest member of the California Supreme Court. Kruger will be sworn in on January 5. Stay tuned to learn more about the newest member of the Supreme Court.

Thank you for bearing with us as SCOCAblog ramps up. After the holidays, we will be getting you more frequent updates of what is happening at the Supreme Court of California, and bringing you analysis of pending and decided cases from our expert panel of contributors. If you’re interested in contributing, email us here. Also, stay tuned for a new added function at SCOCAblog: a live docket! The live docket will keep you updated on all of the cases on SCOCA’s docket.

Governor Jerry Brown announced today that he has nominated Leondra Kruger to the California Supreme Court. Kruger, who is currently a deputy assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, will replace Justice Joyce Kennard who retired in April. Read more about Governor Brown’s new nominee here.

Adam Liptak, writing for the New York Times a few years ago, called the California Supreme Court the “most influential state court in the nation” and for good reason. A study published in the U.C. Davis Law Review, which focused on the number of times state court decisions were cited by other state courts, found California’s high court to be the winner by a landslide. But if one were to judge solely by the table of contents of leading law reviews, one would hardly know that to be the case. It is not that law reviews have been shunning the...

In Brief On July 7, 2014, the California Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in City of Los Angeles v. County of Kern, holding the federal supplemental-jurisdiction statute to provide only a “grace period” of thirty days to refile a supplemental claim in state court after dismissal by a federal court. Under this holding, if a plaintiff refiles the claim in state court more than thirty days after a federal dismissal, the plaintiff could be barred by the state statute of limitations. Background Although federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, they may hear state claims under circumstances allowed by the...

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SCOCAblog is a Berkeley Law and Hastings Law Journal publication focused on substantive coverage of the Supreme Court of California. We analyze cases and issues before the court, and report news about the court itself. Our contributors include former justices of the court, academics, and advocates experienced in appellate practice before the state high court.